11 NOVEMBER 2000, Page 32

Send for Peter

SUCH commands are not always welcome. Around the City, suitable candidates must now be hiding under their desks and having their calls intercepted. That said, I pick up an undercurrent of hope that the call will come through to Peter Levene, Lord Lev- ene of Portsoken. An outstanding Lord Mayor, still based in the City as chairman of Deutsche Bank Investment Banking Europe, he has a record of rescuing appar- ently lost causes from the brink — the Jubilee Line extension and Canary Wharf, for two. The last call he had from the Gov- ernor asked him to settle the future of British Invisibles, which should be the City's export board but has been losing visibility. That will not take him much longer, and might even give him an appetite. I hope that he would take up my proposal to replace the Stock Exchange's pointless tower with a rebuilt Savoy Hotel. Mr Cruickshank, I note, now agrees that the tower must come down. This is progress.